TV’s Moments of Joy: Otev, the Broadway Clam

Big Brother – So, for the last few years, they’ve had a Veto challenge where the Houseguests search through the yard for items labeled with the answers to trivia questions. When they do this, they present them to “Otev”, which is, of course, “Veto” spelled backwards. In the past, Otev has been a giant wooden idol and a massive gorilla head that had apparently eaten Season 11’s Casey. It’s always been a little weird, but this year, Otev took the form of a huge clam who sang ragtime ditties about the Houseguests. Yes, that’s right, he was Otev the Broadway Clam. Between the Clam and the sock puppet punishment this week (in which the Houseguests could only speak using sock puppet versions of themselves), and ZingBot 3000 from a couple of weeks back, the producers brought us some really legitimately strange stuff this season. A Broadway Clam, an Insult Comedy Robot – why, just those two characters alone are better than anything that happened in the whole of Season 9. (And Season 4, come to think of it. That year was rough .)